The Caleb Collection

by Ted Dekker

  “Then give them the Ark!” Goldstein shouted, red faced.

  Now the Plenum exploded, mostly by those outraged. The tide was unstoppable, Solomon thought. The Temple would be rebuilt. Unless the Arabs were bluffing.

  He dismissed the thought.

  The Speaker banged the podium, but no one was listening now. He was banging the podium and calling for a vote, and Solomon was thinking they would have to fire another gunshot when the door to his right suddenly slammed open.

  At first the sight of the two people in the doorway had no effect on him. He wondered who had let the visitors in. But then he saw the woman’s face, and he caught his breath.

  Rebecca?

  She stood still for a moment, scanning the room, her long hair flowing over her shoulders. Then her eyes met his, and he knew that his daughter lived. Tears flooded his eyes.

  “Rebecca!?” he cried.

  The Plenum quieted and followed his eyes.

  “Rebecca! You . . . you’re alive!” He stretched out his arms and stepped towards her.

  “Father.” She walked towards him quickly, around the government table. The man at her side followed. He stood tall, dressed in a dirty tunic. Tangled dark hair fell to his shoulders. His eyes were bright and they had fixed on the Ark, and Solomon knew that this man was Caleb.

  But walking beside his daughter, the man looked more like Elijah.

  47

  The moment Rebecca saw the Ark in the Plenum, she knew Israel would never be the same again. And it wasn’t because the Ark had come to Jerusalem; it was because Caleb had come to the Ark.

  They had taken a ride from Eilat with a reservist headed to Jerusalem, and the further north they drove, the more enigmatic Caleb had become. He had stopped talking altogether as they entered the city. But it wasn’t until she’d been told that her father was here, at the Knesset, that she really began to understand the significance of Caleb’s coming.

  He was a Christian from the desert, unknowing curator of the Ark, and he had been practically dragged north by a strange, undeniable power that she now knew came from the Nazarene.

  It was as if her father was really the Roman governor, Pilate, and Caleb had come to reopen a two-thousand-year-old case. The Jews versus the Nazarene. The old Ark versus the new ark, the one that was now in man. A spike of dread nudged her heart as she walked towards her father.

  Rebecca embraced him.

  “I was told you were dead,” he said.

  “I was,” she said. She smiled. “But no more. Do I look dead to you?”

  “No. No, thank God!”

  Her father turned to Caleb. “And this must be . . .”

  “Caleb.” She turned to him. “This is my father.”

  But Caleb might not have even heard her. He was staring at the gold Ark and a glint lit his eyes. A glint she’d seen before.

  “What is the meaning of this?” A member she recognized only by sight called from the fourth row back. “Please, we don’t have time for this!”

  Caleb turned his head and looked at him, stupefied. The man settled to his seat, as if reprimanded. Rebecca glanced at her father. He was watching Caleb intently. She backed up, struggling with an uncertain emotion that rose through her throat.

  Her worlds were meeting. The old and the new. Old wineskin, new wine.

  Caleb turned back to the Ark and walked towards it.

  “Stop!” Solomon ordered.

  Caleb stopped, one meter from the Ark.

  “Who is this man, David?” the prime minister demanded. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Solomon answered without removing his eyes from Caleb. “This is Caleb. He’s from the monastery where we found the Ark.”

  “And what’s he doing here?” the prime minister asked in a low urgent voice. “We don’t have time for this!”

  Solomon hesitated. “I don’t know.” He glanced at Rebecca, brows arched. “Rebecca?”

  Rebecca looked at Caleb and their eyes met. She might as well have been looking into pools of bottomless love, she thought. Because she did love this man, more than anything she had ever loved. Her knees felt weak. He was here for a definite reason, and the love that had grown between them somehow fed that reason. He had lost his first love and then found it—and she had played a part in that. She had inadvertently forced him to face his faith, and now his reborn faith would be tested here, before this court.

  “I think he wants to tell you something,” Rebecca said. “You should listen. He is a prophet from God.”

  A few protests rippled through the auditorium.

  “We don’t need a prophet,” Solomon said. “We have the Ark.”

  Caleb turned and faced the camera in the gallery. He looked at it for a few seconds.

  “The world must see what I have to show you,” he said. “Is this camera broadcasting?”

  Immediately an objection was raised, but the prime minister raised his hand. “No. But it is recording.”

  “I must object,” Solomon said.

  “Let him speak, David.”

  The cameraman bent behind the camera, face glued to the eyepiece.

  Caleb turned then walked slowly around the government table, blinking, like a lost child examining a strange breed of aliens. He tapped his fingers on the wood as he walked its length. It was unreal. The Knesset just watched him, stunned.

  “You are the Jews?” he asked. What was he asking? Of course they were Jews—he knew that.

  No one answered.

  “When I was a child, I sang and a thousand people fell down. Did you hear about that?”

  A low murmur said that some of them had.

  “Then I somehow misplaced my love for God. It can happen to anyone. But I have found it again. And I’ve come to tell you that his love is now in the hearts of his children. It’s no longer in the Ark.”

  “You have no right to come in here and tell us about God’s love!” Solomon bit off, furious. “You are a Christian! Your people have killed more of us than the Arabs.”

  “You mean the Nazis? They weren’t my people, and they weren’t God’s children. God’s power now lives in his children, through the Holy Spirit, not in this Ark.”

  Shouts of protest boomed across the auditorium.

  “Blasphemy!” someone shouted. The call pushed others into open argument, and the noise rose to a dull roar.

  Caleb looked around, as if perplexed by the scene. He turned and walked to the Ark and then spun around so that his dirty white tunic swept around his ankles. He planted his feet wide and shoved both arms over his head.

  Rebecca held her breath.

  Caleb tilted his head back and screamed at the ceiling. A long, chilling Ahhhhh! sound that ripped through the room and silenced every last man and woman with their mouths still open.

  Rebecca felt her heart melt. She lowered her forehead into her right hand and stifled a sob.

  Caleb’s cry echoed to silence and he looked around. Tears slipped down the prime minister’s cheeks. Others in his cabinet blinked at their own tears. Confused, they looked down, avoiding Caleb’s eyes.

  “The power of the Messiah fills my bones,” Caleb cried. Now several began to weep openly.

  “But I am not the Messiah. I am only like a voice crying in the wilderness. The Messiah has already come and he was the Nazarene. He was Christ.”

  It was all too much for the Orthodox Jew, Haim Edri. He jumped to his feet. “You are speaking blasphemy! How dare you defile this holy place of God!”

  A dozen others jumped to their feet and joined in the protest, red faced. Rebecca watched them and felt her heart bleed.

  Caleb suddenly threw his hands skyward and yelled again, the same long, chilling Ahhhh sound that had stilled them before.

  The effect was immediate. Those standing, including Haim Edri, collapsed to their seats. Weeping broke out like an epidemic, and suddenly Caleb was weeping with them. Standing with his feet spread and his hands lifted, weeping at the ceiling. Tears rolled off h
is cheeks and fell on his tunic. The room swelled with the terrible sound.

  Solomon stood to Rebecca’s right, staring angrily at Caleb, fighting his own tears. She wanted to rush over and tell him that it was all going to be just fine. That all of his dreams were not being dashed by this seemingly impossible moment. But she knew that it wasn’t true. Whatever it was, encountering the Nazarene’s power could not be characterized as just fine.

  Above them the camera continued to blink green. The prime minister sat with his head in his hands, crying like a baby.

  Caleb suddenly stopped, looked around as though dazed, and then walked for the Ark. He reached out and touched it before anyone could stop him.

  Silence slammed into the room.

  He shoved the lid sideways with a scraping sound that grated across the Plenum. The members were too stunned to respond. They only gaped with horror.

  Caleb reached into the Ark and pulled out first an ancient looking scroll and then a flat tablet of stone. From where she stood, Rebecca could clearly see the black markings on the slate. She was looking at the fingerprint of God, and the realization made her dizzy.

  He held them up, one in each hand. “Yes, real. The Ark of the Covenant. Stone, paper, gold, and wood.”

  He tossed the relics back in the chest and they landed with a loud clunk. “But powerless!” he yelled. “Powerless!” He walked away from the Ark.

  “The same power that once flowed through the prophet Elijah is now upon me.” His eyes flashed eagerly. He walked to the government table and back, staring out at the people.

  Still no one spoke.

  “And if God gives you a sign today, will you then believe? How many times must he speak before you listen? Not the Jew only, but the world!” He pointed into the camera. “The Muslim and the Christian and the Hindu—all of you!”

  Caleb lifted a hand. He looked over at Rebecca, eyes on fire. “Do you believe, Rebecca?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Do you believe?”

  “Yes! Yes, I believe!” she yelled.

  He closed his eyes and immediately she felt the energy tickle her skin. The hair on her neck stood on end. It was as though an electric current were passing through the room.

  “If you cannot believe what he has said, then at least believe in the evidence of his power,” Caleb said in a loud voice. “‘As men gather silver, bronze, iron, lead, and tin into the midst of a furnace, to blow fire on it, to melt it; so I will gather you in My anger and in My fury, and I will leave you there and melt you.’” He was quoting a prophet.

  His hair moved in a breeze that inexplicably swept across the room. His arm lowered slowly, eerily, with a single curved forefinger pointing towards the Ark, as if Michelangelo himself had painted him on the stage. The wind continued to blow softly across the room, sweeping at his tunic and hair.

  His arm stopped level with the Ark and hung there lazily.

  The wings on the cherubim closest to Rebecca began to sag, and she felt her heart jump in her chest. The angels bowed together, until their heads touched. The rim about the lid began to fold out slowly.

  The Ark of the Covenant was melting!

  A shriek of alarm shattered the silence. Haim Edri stood pointing at the Ark. Those seated closest, around the horseshoe table, shoved back in alarm from a sudden heat radiating out from the Ark.

  Like lead in a furnace, the Ark withered. The two angels melted flat into the lid, and now the ancient acacia wood under the gold bared itself and burst into flame.

  Caleb stood with eyes closed, hand suspended, smiling. Scores of members had fallen to their knees and wept bitterly. But whether they were weeping for the Ark, or for the presence of God carried on the wind, Rebecca did not know.

  Scores of others were too stunned to move.

  Solomon sank slowly to his knees, weeping. Father, I beg you to reveal yourself to him, Rebecca prayed. Her father lowered his head and shook with sobs.

  It was over in two minutes. The burning ashes of the wood sat on top of gold that had melted to the table and dripped like icicles to the floor. Only then did Caleb lower his arm, still smiling wide like a child.

  The camera still blinked green.

  48

  Rebecca stood in the dim light of the candles in her father’s home and smiled at Caleb who sat at the wood table. Solomon looked out the window as he had on a thousand nights, gazing at the Temple Mount to the east.

  The Dome of the Rock glowed gold by the moon’s light, just as it had each of those nights. The Waqf guards marched its perimeter as they always had, and if you looked long enough, you would see one of them walk to the Western Wall and look down on the courtyard, empty now in the moonlight. Nothing at all had changed.

  It had been two days since the meeting of the Knesset.

  Solomon turned from the window. “Then do you believe it will one day be rebuilt?” he asked.

  Caleb grinned. He hadn’t lost his enigmatic flare, but Rebecca had decided it was part of what attracted her to him. “Many do. I don’t know. The New Testament seems to suggest it, but in reality the Temple is here.” He pounded his chest twice with a fist.

  “Yes, I think you’ve made your point with bells and whistles,” Solomon said.

  Solomon had run from the Knesset that day, and they hadn’t found him until late in the night. He’d been thrown into an abyss of confusion. But if Rebecca was not mistaken, he was beginning to emerge.

  The camera footage of Caleb’s finger pointing at the Ark while it slowly melted into a puddle on the floor had been played and replayed on nearly every television station around the globe. The Arabs had watched in disbelief as the reason for their war dissolved before their eyes. It had taken them twenty-four hours to begin their withdrawal, mostly because of the confusion left in the wake of the footage. Not that the footage itself was confusing, but the implication of this undeniable supernatural intervention of God clearly was confusing. What did this mean to Islam? Or to Judaism? Or to Christianity, for that matter? Abu Ismael, at least, had seen the hand of God and had called the prime minister personally. He had actually asked to speak with Caleb. It was hardly imaginable!

  The talking heads were just now placing their spin control on footage that had made it to the street level already. The rabbis were beginning to line up with some nonsense about illusions and the Islamic imams were saying something similar using different words. Even Christians, in substantial numbers, were voicing dissent, decrying the destruction of the Ark, which would have hastened the end of days.

  No matter how you looked at it, one thing was clear: there was no Ark and therefore no need for war. The U.S. brokered the pullback, but it would have happened on its own, Rebecca thought.

  Caleb glanced at her nervously.

  Ask him, she mouthed. And then she winked.

  Caleb faced Solomon. “Actually, I have come to ask you something, sir.”

  “Yes? Then ask. I doubt you can do any more harm than you already have.”

  “Yes. Well then I would like to ask you for the hand of your daughter,” he said and glanced at Rebecca again. She dipped her head and smiled in support.

  Solomon’s face lightened a shade. “Ask for her hand? You’re not suggesting . . . marriage!”

  Caleb cleared his throat. “Yes. Yes, her hand in marriage.”

  “She’s a Jew! You’re a Christian, for God’s sake!”

  “I’m an Ethiopian and she’s an Israeli!”

  Solomon stared at Caleb, and then at Rebecca. He finally let out a long sigh and turned back to the window. Rebecca hadn’t expected his immediate approval and, all things considered, this was actually a good start.

  “So you think you love my daughter; is that it, boy?”

  Caleb looked at Rebecca. “I love her deeply. She is beautiful beyond my imagination. She is wise and she is kind and she is tender. She is—”

  “I know my own daughter, Caleb. No need to fill me in.” Solomon turned back. “Tender? Are yo
u sure you know her? The rest I’ll grant you, but killing isn’t done with a tender hand.”

  “I think she’s done with killing. Her hands have become too tender for killing,” Caleb said.

  Her father raised an eyebrow. “You have taken one treasure from me already this week, and now you ask for the other? All my life I have done little but dream of rebuilding God’s holy Temple.”

  He couldn’t let it go, and Rebecca hardly blamed him.

  “Then build his Temple,” Caleb said. “But build it in here.” He placed his hand on his chest again.

  Solomon nodded. “Yes, yes. In here. How silly of me. And what about you, Rebecca?”

  “Father?”

  “What do you think of this ludicrous suggestion?”

  “I have felt his power in my veins, Father. I have given him my life.”

  “Whose power?”

  She hesitated. “The Nazarene’s.”

  “I’m talking about your marriage to Caleb!” he said.

  “Oh.” She looked at Caleb and smiled. “Then I don’t think the suggestion is ludicrous at all. I can’t imagine a man I’d rather marry. He’s won my heart already; why shouldn’t I give him my hand?”

  Solomon glared at her for a full three seconds. Then his face softened and he closed his eyes. “My, my, you have taken the other treasure from me, haven’t you?”

  Caleb spoke softly. “My treasure is Christ—”

  “I’m talking about Rebecca!”

  “Yes, I know. But I would like your blessing.”

  “And now you want my blessing as well as my treasures. Then take it.” For a moment, Rebecca thought he was speaking out of spite. But then a soft smile lit his face. “Winning my daughter’s heart is no small task. God knows you have earned it.”

  “Then you agree?” Rebecca asked, slightly surprised.

  “But you will live in Jerusalem.”

  “My home has been destroyed,” Caleb said. “Your government has been good enough to promise funding the restoration of the Debra Damarro—the least I can do for my parents is to rebuild it.”

  The flap with Ethiopia over the Ark had been short but heated. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church insisted that they still had the original Ark at Saint Mary’s in Axum, and they were demanding an apology. Israel’s first gesture was this rebuilding effort.